ext4 over xfs [LWN.net]

ext4 over xfs

Posted Jan 23, 2009 3:54 UTC (Fri) by clump (subscriber, #27801)
In reply to: ext4 over xfs by rfunk
Parent article: Ext4 to be standard for Fedora 11, Btrfs also included (heise online)

I believe you're referring to mounting ordered mode by default. It's the main reason I use EXT3 nearly everywhere. EXT4 has it, and it's the default just like EXT3.

Found this nugget and others in 2.6.28's "ext4.txt" documentation.

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Nope - there are other problems with xfs

Posted Jan 23, 2009 10:03 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Actually it all is related to any stress-conditions. Fill the XFS partition with bittorrent-downloaded files (no pre-allocate!) and the only way to save this partition is to backup everything and restore from backup. Yes, it's nasty thing to do with the FS (bittorrent with pre-allocate more- or-less equals to creation of files from pieces in random order and if you fill the FS to 100% there are no way to radically optimize layout - because all files must be sparse or else they'll not fit), but I still expect that any sane filesystem will be slow after that, not dead. XFS failed this test consistently for a few years in row and eventually I've just stopped caring and stopped using it...

ext4 over xfs

Posted Jan 23, 2009 13:45 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Well, I was specifically thinking of the other side, how badly xfs has
screwed up filesystems of mine in the past. And I started out as a fan of
xfs, having used it on SGIs. But between losing an entire filesystem on
an external drive, and getting strings of zero-bytes strewn without
warning throughout files on another filesystem, I'm done with xfs.

(BTW, I meant "if *ext4* is anywhere near as reliable as ext3" in my
original comment.)